A SHOP manager who brazenly stole £36,000 from his own store will pay back just £261.

Taylor Reece sealed his shocked staff inside the Repair My Phone Today shop by closing the shutters before fleeing with the cash in a Tesco carrier bag.

Despite his dramatic getaway from the New Inn Hall Street shop, the 41-year-old of Aldrich Road, Oxford, later handed himself in and admitted theft by employee.

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He was jailed for that theft at an earlier hearing, but he appeared again at Oxford Crown Court on Friday.

At that hearing – to decide how much of his ill-gotten gains could be confiscated – prosecutors said Reece had benefitted from the crime to the value of £36,806.84.

John Waller, on behalf of the Crown Prosecution Service, said that the ‘available assets’ for Reece, however, were just £261.46.

Judge Ian Pringle ordered that that sum be confiscated, to be paid within three months.

A default period of three months in prison was also agreed, which will be served if Reece fails to pay back that money.

Before he was sentenced for the crime, Reece had claimed the total money stolen was some £19,000, but he went on to drop his case and agreed to the full figure.

He was jailed in February for a total of 32 months.

Outlining the theft, prosecutors said Reece had been employed at the Oxford phone shop as a store manager.

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As part of his role he completed the ‘cashing up’ at the shop and also had to cash money from an adjacent Western Union money services shop at the Clarendon Centre.

On November 30, 2017, Reece was seen by another employee to be piling money into a plastic bag, seemingly performing his usual duties.

On this day, however, he placed that bag into another Tesco carrier bag and then ‘ran out the store without warning.’

He went on to close the shutters on the front of the shop ‘in order to stop anybody chasing after him.’

The money that had been snatched was made up of more than £19,000 in Western Union money as well as £14,000 that had served as a ‘float.’

There was also £1,572.74 in store takings.

The court heard that he had used the money – which was never recovered – to pay off a gambling debt and for his family.